


Richie Tozier: Small Town Trash

by letmetellyouaboutmyfeels



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Casually Flipping Off Andy Muschietti, Casually Slamming Stephen King, In Which the Author Attempts to be Funny, M/M, Mentioned Losers Club (IT), Richie Tozier's Stand Up Act, Richie is a pining idiot, That Includes Stan Motherfuckers, Unbury Your Gays You Cowards, Yet Another Richie Stand Up Comedy Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-30
Updated: 2019-12-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:00:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22028236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/letmetellyouaboutmyfeels/pseuds/letmetellyouaboutmyfeels
Summary: Richie Tozier debuts his new routine after vanishing from the comedy scene.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 54
Kudos: 510





	Richie Tozier: Small Town Trash

**Author's Note:**

> A special shout-out to spiritsflame, who has been chatting back and forth with me about this idea for literal months. A few quotes in here are ones I actually came up with while riffing on this idea with her so, if you like this fic, thank her.

It’s not exactly tense in the audience. But it’s also not the usual pre-show atmosphere one would expect from the audience about to see a comedian. Everyone’s a bit on-edge, not sure what they’re in for. Richie Tozier forgot his lines, threw up on stage, and then vanished for a week to go back to Maine. Now he’s back, but what he’s going to do at his show tonight is anybody’s guess.

Everyone knows the official story—a former childhood friend of Tozier’s tried to commit suicide, he found out right before his show started that night, he flew back to Maine to go to his hometown and join his other friends in support. Also something about a murder with an axe, but nobody quite believes that part. Richie Tozier, killing an escaped asylum inmate with an axe? Yeah, right.

So here they are. It’s for curiosity of the most morbid kind, but they are still here. The show’s sold out. New York only, and why Tozier’s in New York City is anybody’s guess, but rumor has it that if the show does well here, he’ll take it on tour.

The lights dim, then light back up again, the classic sign for everyone to shut the fuck up and get to their seats if they haven’t already. There’s the usual routine about fire exits, no smoking, no flash photography, and then everything goes dark for good and the stage lights come on.

When Richie Tozier walks on, the reaction from the audience—despite the enthusiastic applause—is one of confusion. He doesn’t look like a man who’s just been in rehab, or like a man who was just through an emotional wringer. _Stable_ , that’s the word, he looks _stable_ in a way that makes you realize just how off-kilter he looked before.

The enthusiasm is genuine. Some people are there because they want to see a comeback. Some people are there to see him fuck up, and Richie clearly knows that. Doesn’t matter too much either way. It’s energy, and that’s what performers feed on.

“All right, all right, you can all stop, I know some of you were paid to do that.” Richie pauses. “You all negotiated how much my manager was paying you to clap, right? Last time some people didn’t do that and a fight broke out when some people said they’d been paid twenty bucks and others said they’d been paid fifty.”

There’s some light laughter. Richie seems a bit nervous in a way that he hasn’t ever before, which is fair given that before, if a joke bombed, it was fine because it wasn’t his joke to begin with. It’s hard to make up good comedy when you can’t remember the first sixteen years of your life. That fucking clown didn’t just take their memories—he took the very foundations of their identity, trapping them all in a loop, making them express only the most shallow version of themselves (if you’re Bill or Richie) and keeping them unable to break free of abusive patterns (if you’re Eddie or Bev).

Stan’s the only one who got to be himself and find happiness, but then, Stan never fully forgot. There was always something wise and sensitive about Stan, something in him that always _knew_ things in a way that most other people on earth don’t.

“So, let’s start with why you’re all here—you all want to know why I had a complete breakdown onstage and then vanished for a month. And I gotta say? I’m really fucking disappointed in you all. I was hoping for some pizzazz, some real crazy stuff, but all of you just said it was drugs. Drugs!? C’mon! Where’s the theory that the aliens from my home planet made me come home? I thought at least one person was going to say my manager poisoned my backstage whiskey. I am ashamed of all of you. I wanted to be on Buzzfeed Unsolved and instead you all just decided I’d been doing too much coke. Do I look like Charlie Sheen to you!?”

Some people laugh at that—it’s scattered across the audience, making it clear who gets the joke and who doesn’t.

“Ah, you can tell who the old people in the audience are. They’re the ones who laughed at that last joke. For the rest of you, I’m giving you permission to take your phones out and google it. Tiger blood, that’s all I’m saying.”

There’s some whooping from the same people who got the joke the first time.

“The funny thing is, I am an addict—not to coke, I’m not fun enough to be addicted to coke, God, okay, real quick, honesty time: I am so fucking boring. My friends are kind enough to remind me about this at least once a week. I’m the kind of guy who watches HGTV and coos over how the backsplash really _does_ bring the whole kitchen together. Which is a true sign that you’re an adult and need to fling yourself off a building immediately.”

The laughter this time is a bit nervous, like the audience is wondering if they should be finding that funny or not. Richie shakes his head. “No, no, it’s okay, you can laugh. My humor can be pretty dark. That was something I kept running into before I started letting other people write my stuff—yes! It’s okay! We can talk about this!”

Everyone knows by now that he had a ghostwriter, because while the internet was exploding about his freak out, they were also doing research, and, well, there was only so long something could be kept a secret.

“In all seriousness, guys, there are people who have a good stage presence and those who don’t. I’m serious, here.” Richie nods. “You all know I was on SNL, yeah, that’s where I met Gordon, he was my ghostwriter, really fucking funny guy, he was on the writing team for SNL but he had no stage presence. And I’m allowed to say that because he told me I could. I do that now, I have to ask everyone in my life if they’re okay with me making fun of them on stage. My friends all said sure except for my best friend Stan who said if I made fun of him he’d send birds to pick my eyes out and normally I wouldn’t buy that but you guys don’t know Stan. He’s terrifying. My mom could never get me to eat vegetables a day in my life but one look from Stan and I’d be shoveling carrots into my mouth so fast I almost choked. I think he made a pact with a warlock for unholy mental powers.

“Anyway, I had a good stage presence back on SNL and Gordon had the writing skills, so we teamed up. Worked for a while, and then I turned the first six rows of my audience into the splash zone, whoops. But I was always told my humor was too depressing, which, given my hometown, does not surprise me in the fucking least.

“Yeah, my hometown, Derry, Maine. Oh my fucking God, guys. Derry is adorable, perfect, cute as a button. If you like fun carnivals, bullies who literally come after you with knives, a kissing bridge that’s the site of at least one hate crime, and your children getting kidnapped, then Derry is the place for you. Now with added homophobia and racism!” Richie’s using the kind of voice you’d expect from an old-timey tourism commercial voiceover. “It's okay, I can make jokes about kidnapped kids, because that was my entire childhood. Did you know that Derry, Maine is _number one_ in the country for murders and child disappearances? We had a guy come in every year to do an assembly and warn us about all this and then our parents would be like ‘c’est la vie, go have fun, go be kids.’”

Richie shrugs. “And then they wonder why I became an alcoholic. Really, it’s a mystery. Who would’ve known?” He heaves an exaggerated sigh. “So, yeah, I am an alcoholic, which is fun, because now I get to go to meetings. Actually no that’s a lie, I am forcibly dragged to meetings. They lure me in with cookies and coffee like I’m a lab rat. I’m ninety percent sure my friend went to every single AA in New York City to sample all the snacks, found this one and was like,” Richie puts on a voice that makes it clear he’s imitating someone. “ _Oh, yes, Richie would murder his own mom for a good oatmeal chocolate chip cookie, I’ll trick him into going to this one_. And the worst part is it _worked_. Those assholes are fattening me up one of the twelve steps at a time.”

It’s a kind of raw honesty that the audience obviously didn’t expect, but they’re eating it up. Gossip sells, scandal sells, but there is a special kind of drug that lies inside of truth. When someone’s being honest, sharing their personal details, people can smell it like bloodhounds and they flock, craving that accompanying feeling of intimacy, of hoarding knowledge like dragons.

Eddie did worry that he was being too honest. “Are you really sure you want to share all of this with a bunch of strangers?” he asked at least a dozen times.

It’s the risk analyst in him, clearly.

“I’m sure,” Richie had said, even though he wasn’t, but he’d rather be too honest than hide more. He’d been hiding his entire life, ever since he moved away from Derry and forgot who he was, forgot the people who loved him. Perhaps it was only fair that the pendulum swung so far the other direction.

“But no,” Richie goes on in the present, the nerves falling away and his whole body loosening as he starts to get into it. “No, I was not in rehab. Which is a shame, because I hear in rehab you get to do all these fun things like water Zumba. I want to do water Zumba in a heated pool!

“Instead of a nice cushy stint at the Betty Ford, I had to go back and deal with my best friend’s suicide attempt, and then our childhood bully—who’s fucked in the head—I mean so am I but I’m the kind of fucked in the head that makes me a blast at parties, he’s the kind that stabs you through the cheek, which is what happened to my other friend.”

The audience gasps. “Yeah! I know! Wait, wait, the great thing is… okay. Set the scene with me.” Richie puts his hands up in the air like he’s framing something. “You’re in the bathroom, washing your hands because you care about hygiene, and then you look up into the mirror and you see this sociopathic fucker behind you, and he stabs you in the face. In the face! What do you do? What do you say? Give me suggestions.”

He crouches down and holds the microphone out to the audience. There are a couple seconds of silence as everyone picks up on the fact that he really does want an answer, and then try to come up with something suitable. “Ouch?” one person ventures.

Richie nods seriously. “A perfectly reasonable answer, thank you ma’am.”

“Help?” offers someone else.

“You, sir, have common sense.” Richie stands up. “But lo, my friend has paranoia in spades but common sense? Nah. They didn’t bother with that. I think they ran out of room in his tiny body.” He grins. “Okay, so he’s five foot nine inches, which is reasonable, but he was definitely the tiniest of us when we were kids and I refuse to acknowledge that he’s anything else. It drives him up the _wall_. He once sent me an article about average male height worldwide to prove that he wasn’t short! I’m not fucking kidding you! Someday he’s going to figure out that I do shit like this just because he’s so easy to rile up and on that day, my little green beans, that day I will be in the papers again because I’ll have been murdered.

“So, anyway, my friend’s stabbed right through the cheek. I mean lucky him, it went straight through, nice clean stab into the mouth, not that he appreciated it at the time. He’s got a really fucking cool scar from it now actually, makes him look like he was in a Mad Max film. But this guy’s been stabbed and do you know what his response is?”

Richie’s clearly so amused by this that he’s laughing, giggling rather, his face scrunched up as he tries to maintain his composure. “He says, _why_.”

Richie imitates Eddie’s high-pitched, strangled voice, and the audience loses their shit laughing.

“He was nearly murdered and his response is _why_.” Richie wipes at his eyes. “Oh my God. Can you imagine what that phone call would’ve been. _What were his last words?_ ” He descends into laughter again and then clears his throat, managing to compose himself. “Oh, yeah, love that guy. Only him. Great thing is, he—okay so I have to give his response a ten out of ten for comedy but a five out of ten for proper response to getting stabbed, is that fair? You all think that’s fair?”

The audience nods and murmurs assent.

“Excellent. I will be sure to tell him you all agree with me, because he thinks my ratings are shit, but whatever. I’m the one who changed his bandages for a month so he doesn’t get to complain. Oh, yeah, he got stabbed again! In the chest! By a house post when the house was—okay so those of you who grew up in a small town, raise your hand.”

His ADHD is definitely showing a he bounces from subject to subject, but he always wraps up all his stories eventually, so who cares? Besides, the punchline to the ‘Eddie got stabbed’ story is too good to waste too early into the show.

A few people raise their hands. “Yes!” Richie pumps his fist into the air. “Perfect. So you guys can stay, everyone else get the fuck out. Small town trash here only please.”

Everyone laughs.

“Okay, so, for those of you who didn’t grow up in a small town, and I’m talking like, five thousand people or less, here, you probably won’t get this, but that’s okay. My small town buddies, was there or was there not, in your town, one house that was definitely completely and totally fucking haunted.”

The people who had raised their hands all cheer.

“Yes!” Richie nods enthusiastically. “Okay, so, in our town, that house was called the Neibolt House because it was on Neibolt street. I mean I think it was called something else, Well House because the town’s water well used to be there—look my friend’s a historian and the town librarian, or he was the town librarian until recently, so, he will blab to you about this stuff for hours. But this house, man. This house was so fucking haunted. I shit you not. So when all was said and done we were in this house and it fucking collapsed on us and my buddy got impaled.” He pauses. “No, his response was not, ‘oh look I’ve been impaled’, because Eddie hates _Frozen_ , I don’t know why, maybe because he hates joy.”

There are some boos from _Frozen_ haters and cheers from _Frozen_ lovers.

“Anyway I changed his bandages this whole time while he’s been recovering so I can say anything I want about him forever, those are the rules. Now, most of you are probably going, _what the shit happened in your fucking hometown_? Well, here’s a quick summary. One of my old friends from childhood tried to kill himself. We all went home to help him out and support him. His wife’s great by the way. I then learned that all of my friends got hot while I just stayed like this.”

Richie gestures at himself. “What the fuck. My friend Ben got run over by the Sexy Train multiple times, my friend Beverly Marsh is—” Someone cheers up on the balcony and Richie points at them. “Yeah! Bev’s a fashion designer, she’s so great, I love her. She’ll set a building on fire if you dare her to so we get along great. And then my buddy Mike looks like that guy from Old Spice, you know the one…” Richie imitates the Old Spice guy. “Look at your man, now look at me. Sadly, your man is not me.” He shakes his head. “And I look like an overgrown Muppet. I look like a fuckboy. I know, I'm aware. I look exactly like the kind of Reddit user your mutuals warn you about.”

Everyone cracks up laughing at that. Richie’s grinning. “God, no wonder none of you believed my jokes about my imaginary girlfriends. You all know that no woman in her right mind is going to go for this. And all the women who aren’t in their right minds are going to go for that fishman from _The Shape of Water_ and y’know what? They are _valid_. I applaud them.

“So I get back to my hometown, realize that while everyone else turned into an adult I just turned into a pile of gross, and then this homicidal childhood bully of ours breaks out of his asylum, stabs my pal, tries to kill my other pal, the house collapses and we all have to go to the hospital, I came out, and we all discovered that after everything my friend thought he was allergic to but wasn’t, he is in fact allergic to kiwi fruit. Oh, and one of my friends got divorced and is now dating my other friend. And this is all over the course of two. Fucking. Days! Two days!”

Richie makes a move like he’s been slapped across the face. “Talk about fucking whiplash.”

The crowd, however, is silent.

Richie grins. “Ah, you all noticed the one little thing I threw in there. I did that to my manager, too. _Hey, what’s shaking, so my friend got impaled and I’m taking care of him, I’m writing my own material now, I’m gay, and I won’t be available for the next week because I’m helping my friend pack up his shit while he starts his road trip to Florida_.

“And my manager—who is a very patient guy all things considered—says, wait, go back. And I said, oh yeah I’m writing my own material now. And he said no dipshit you’re gay!?” Richie looks down at himself, then looks back up at the audience. “Yeah, I know, my shitty fashion sense does a great job of hiding it.”

The crowd starts to laugh again now.

“It’s a hell of a thing to tell people you’re gay because they look at my outfits and they’re like… you sure about that?” Richie looks down at himself again. “Nobody _told_ me you had to take a fashion exam to get your gay card! What sort of gatekeeping bullshit… can’t I just wear flannels all the time like the lesbians? No? Fine.” He gives another exaggerated sigh. “So, yeah, I’m gay. Which I really should’ve known… look, I’m just gonna say it. When you’re watching _Dirty Dancing_ and all your friends are looking at Baby and you’re looking at Patrick goddamn Swayze? You might be into men. Just putting that out there.

“Actually my friends had the best responses. Like my friend Ben? Sweet, sweet guy. I think he’s not human, actually. He’s a golden retriever that was transformed into a human. But he was telling me how great it was that I was doing this, and he supported me, all this great sweet stuff. But my friend Mike takes the fucking cake because—apparently, and I did not know this, way back in the day, he and my friend Bill had a big fucking argument over it. And so Mike points at Bill and he just goes, _I fucking knew it!_ ”

Richie puts his hands up in the air and takes a few steps back, his eyes going wide. “Jesus Christ, Mike, okay, glad to know you will hold someone to a ten-dollar bet they made with you a quarter of a century ago. Literally, guys, he literally made my friend Bill fork over ten dollars. These are the kinds of friends I have, and they’re the fucking best.

“Take my best friend. I met him in kindergarten when he let me have his milk at lunch. I said we were soulmates and what do you know, the little shit put up with me for a decade.”

Richie shakes his head. “I do not know why he did that. I really don’t deserve for him to do that—well, now I do, because like I said I’m doing his bandages every night. One time I decided to make a joke and I said that I could poison his salve that I have to put on, and murder him, because I saw someone do that in this British mystery show once. And this fucker looks me dead in the eye and says, ‘that’s why I always have a note in my pocket that says _Richie did it_ ’.”

The crowd bursts into laughter.

“Y’know what if that did happen, I’d deserve it. Oh, man.” Richie shakes his head. “But I don’t think you guys are really understanding the man that is Eddie Fucking Kaspbrak. That’s his name, by the way, you can look him up. He’s a risk analyst, which is the funniest thing because back when I first knew him, the only risk he was analyzing was if he shoved me off a cliff, what were the chances I’d grab him and yank him down with me.

“I want you to picture a tiny cute dog, only that dog is full of more rage than the sun, and is also a hypochondriac, and you're starting to almost get a picture of the sheer insanity that is this kid.”

The crowd’s really cracking up now, and Richie can’t help but preen a bit because ha, who cares what Eddie thinks, stories about Eddie are fucking hilarious.

And here comes the risky part.

See, his friends all know he’s gay. And he’s ninety percent sure they all know he’s head over fucking heels in love with Eddie—except for Eddie himself.

Yeah. Despite living with the guy, changing his bandages, looking after him, and testing half of his standup routine on him, Richie has yet to tell Eddie that he’s twitterpated for him.

It’s just… Richie only got Eddie back. And he nearly lost him, first to Bowers and then to that _fucking_ clown. He can’t lose him to his own stupidity. And Eddie’s going through a divorce (a rather speedy one, thanks to prenups, there’s that risk analyzing again, but still, Myra’s making it as emotionally painful as possible). The last thing Eddie needs is Richie dumping feelings on him. Eddie’s entire life is people—his mother, his soon to be ex-wife—dumping their shit on him and fucking with his head as a result. Richie refuses to do that.

So despite Stan’s judging looks, which he can feel all the way from Atlanta, and despite Mike’s well-meaning advice and Bev’s pointed texts, Richie’s not saying jack shit.

Not to Eddie, anyway.

The hundreds of people in this theatre, though, are a completely different matter.

“I mean,” he goes on, taking a deep breath, “is it any wonder that I fell head over heels in love with him?”

The crowd goes silent for half a beat, and then half the people cheer. There are wolf whistles. The ones not cheering are obviously keeping silent because they’re not sure if it would be disrespectful or not.

“Yup.” Richie grins. “He doesn’t know that, of course, so I thought instead I would tell all of you. That’s how it works now, right? Don’t talk to your relatives, just blast it on social media.”

People laugh, obviously feeling called out.

“I told this guy in kindergarten he was my soulmate and I genuinely fucking mean that, I was that love at first sight bitch, and I was five fucking years old. I think I hold the world’s record for Most Pitiful Pining. You would not believe the shit I was willing to do for this little maniac. I once snapped his broken arm bone back into place because he was whimpering in pain and I was going out of my mind trying to figure out how to help him. I spent my entire allowance buying him ice cream in the summer and I climbed into that little fucker’s bedroom window every single night like Romeo only with a lot more swearing and crashing and a lot less romance.

“I stubbed my toe once trying to show off for him—because y'know I was always trying to get this idiot's attention, it's not like I had anything else to do with my life, like, school? Who cared about school? Statistically speaking in my town I was gonna be dead before I was twenty—and I stub my toe and this asshole spent two weeks telling me all the ways I had given myself an infection and was gonna die.”

The audience laughs again. Richie gets the impression they love Eddie more than they love him at this point, and that’s totally okay, because he loves Eddie too, and anyone who doesn’t love Eddie is obviously a moron.

“That’s how he shows he cares about people: he worries them to death. I love it. And he doesn’t take shit from anybody! I will let people walk all over me, I’m a fucking doormat, I think it’s the lowkey self-hatred but Eddie, oh no. He will not put up with shit. One time the guy at the ice cream store got my order wrong and I was all, no, no, it’s okay, but Eddie snatched my ice cream cone and marched up to this guy and he yelled at him and talked so fast he scared the guy into giving me another ice cream cone with an extra scoop. He was nine at the time, by the way, nine years old. This is the _kidnapping capital of the United States_ and everyone in town decided that they were going to be afraid of this tiny asshole who was addicted to his inhaler. Forget getting shoved into the trunk of a car or going into the sewers and never coming out, eh, who’s scared of that, right? Just embrace death, it’s all fine. But Eddie Kaspbrak with his ‘I’d like to speak to the manager’ voice? Oh hell no, just give him what he wants and pray he goes away.”

Richie shakes his head, then puts on the face that Stan calls his _disgusting heart eyes face_ and says in his Southern Belle voice, “Ain’t he the greatest?”

The audience laughs some more. Richie nods. “I’m so glad you agree, because here’s the other part, you ready? I mentioned all my friends got really hot. Like, my one friend Ben, right? Looks like a GQ model. My friend Stan looks like that hot liberal philosophy professor who wants to be Robin Williams from _Dead Poets Society_ that you have a crush on in freshman year of college so you like, kind of hope you get a bad grade on your midterm so he’ll call you in and you can persuade him that you’ll do _anything_ to get a good grade, and I’ve been informed by Stan that it’s frankly very disturbing that I am that specific in my description of him.” Richie’s got a shit-eating grin on his face now. “So naturally, I have to keep it in the act.

“But Eddie? Eds, Eddie Spaghetti, holy shit.”

Richie then gets down until he’s lying face down on the floor, and just lies there.

The audience loses their shit.

“ _Guyssssss_ ,” Richie whines into the microphone.

Everyone laughs harder.

Richie gets up and sits on the edge of the stage. “You know how when you’re a teenager, you’ll have a crush on someone, and they’re your age and they’re cute, and then you grow up and you’re disappointed with how they look?” He shakes his head. “No, this motherfucker had to go and get even cuter. I hate him so fucking much, he went and got a fucking six pack, how fucking dare he. I did not sign off on that. I did not give permission. I’m entitled to financial compensation for this bullshittery.”

He stays sitting on the edge of the stage, giving that impression of camaraderie, like he’s now down on the level of the audience, bringing them even more into his personal life. “This is the part where you’re all wondering why I’m telling you all this. Isn’t this being recorded, Trashmouth? Oh, yeah, by the way, that was the nickname my friends gave me growing up. Sure tells you everything you need to know about me. But yeah you all want to know why I’m telling you all this if the guy himself doesn’t know, and you’re right to wonder that. It’s a fair question.

“But here's the wonderful thing, guys, _he will never watch this_. Because, this little shit, _never thought I was funny_.”

The audience loves that. Richie nods along. “Yeah, yeah! Can you believe it!? I gave this tiny five-foot ball of gay rage the best humor of my childhood years and he didn't appreciate a single bit of it. The audacity!”

He gets to his feet again and starts to pace. “But Trashmouth, you say—and we’re all friends here now, you can call me Trashmouth—Trashmouth, you say, why don't you tell him? Won't it be better to just get it off your chest? Buddy, pal, I hid that I was gay for 40 years, do not underestimate me. Do not underestimate my ability to hurt myself. Oh and look I made a vaguely sexual joke, aren't you guys relieved to be back in familiar safe territory? I'll throw in a dick joke so we can all move on from my tragic unrequited love life.”

There are a few _aww_ s of disappointment from the audience, a few cheers, some _aww_ s that sound more like they’re in sympathy, and some more laughs.

“That was all I did growing up was make dick jokes. You should’ve seen the first draft of this. Well, no, wait, the first draft was so depressing that my friend Bill told me it made him want to hang himself. He’s so great at delivering gentle criticism, our Bill. Which is really fucking rich because this is Bill Denbrough.”

There are some scattered cheers and clapping of recognition.

“Yeah! Bill is a horror writer who writes shitty endings. It’s okay, I can say that, because _The New York Times_ said it first and Bill’s used to betrayal from me after I punched him in the face in the summer of ’89. But c’mon, Bill, you had one of your characters die in a fucking bathtub ten pages into the book and then killed off our favorite character ten pages from the end, what kind of bullshit… and you don’t even want to know some of the crazy stuff he put in the middle.”

Someone in the audience yells ‘sewer orgy’ and Richie pulls a face. “We don’t talk about that, my man, my dude, the rest of you with your poor confused faces, you sweet summer children, my darling lambs, do not Wikipedia that, I’m begging you. Bev hit Bill over the head with her chopsticks for that scene.

“Anyway Bill tells me my first draft makes him want to kill himself, I told him that the ending to his book _The Attic_ made me want to down an entire gallon of bleach—y’know, like how you talk to the guy you love like a brother and had a little crush on as a kid—and then my second draft was all dick jokes. Just. Nothing but dick jokes. So then Bill thought it was better but Eddie threatened to smother me with a pillow, so clearly I can’t win.”

Richie shrugs in a _what are you gonna do_ sort of way.

“I actually sent this out to some comedian friends of mine too, and then one of them also said they’d kill me if I made the entire thing dick jokes, so now Eddie’s never gonna let that go as long as he lives.

“But here’s the thing about small towns—oh ho ho, don’t you all love the nonsensical jump in topics I just did there? That’s the ADHD showing, gotta love that. Used to drive my friend Stan fucking nuts because I had straight As in school but I would always do my homework literally as the teacher was walking around collecting it. Lived on the edge, I did.

“Anyway the thing about small towns is that there’s literally no one else out there. You’re stuck with the people you’re stuck with. Even more so in Derry because, did I mention this was the kidnapping-slash-child-death capital of the country? We were all… like I can’t tell you how weird it is to look back on it but at the time we thought it was normal to travel in packs so that nobody would jump you. So you had these friends, and you stuck with them because there was no one else, and because none of us wanted to end up on a milk carton.

“These friends were like my family to me. They still are. So you get why I had to drop everything when I heard one of them was in danger. And now that you know a bit about them you kind of understand, yeah? I mean it’s the 21st Century, we can talk openly about things like mental health and depression. Aside from all the jokes about wanting to kill ourselves, I mean, and I love those jokes as much as the next guy, I made about ten of them tonight. So anyway you get why I dropped everything.

“And if you’re not convinced, then I want to finish telling you what happened when Eddie got stabbed. You’re all going to be in love with him after this so if you could please refrain from trying to marry him so that I still have a chance that would be great. I can see like… okay I can only see about fifteen of you because the lights are right in my fucking eyes…” Richie shields his face. “Okay, yeah, I see at least ten people who are way more handsome than I am, you’re not allowed to propose to Eddie after this, you hear?”

People laugh and there’s a few responses of “sure,” and at least one, “no promises!”

“Honesty, I appreciate it,” Richie says, pointing in the direction of the person who said that and laughing. “So Eddie’s just been stabbed in the face, and he yells _why_ , because he’s a loser. Not as big of a loser as me though. But then—then! Here’s what he does! You ready? Brace yourselves. You’re gonna swoon. This motherfucker _pulls the knife out of his own face_ , and then stabs this jackass who stabbed him! And then—then he says …” Richie imitates Eddie. “You should change that mullet, it’s been like thirty years man.”

The crowd fucking loves it. They’re cheering and clapping. Richie nods along, his face split wide in a grin. “Hell yeah. This guy just stabbed him and he stabs the guy back and he tells him to change his fucking haircut. Stabbed by a guy in a fucking mullet! If that isn’t small town trash I don’t know what is. You small town people, you all have a similar story, yeah?”

There’s some clapping.

“All right, all right.” Richie nods. “So, let’s see… we got the small town trash, we got the useless gay pining over his best friend… we got the lack of fashion sense… yup, yup, you all officially know the real Richie Tozier: a complete and total loser.” He bows.

“I’ve been informed, though, that being yourself, even if that self is a loser, is better than being someone else. So here’s hoping that you all like it. Did I pass muster? Or are you all still certain that I was off in rehab this whole time?”

The crowd applauds some more.

“Good, good, in rehab it is. Great.” People laugh. “All right, in all honesty New York, thank you guys, you’ve been a good crowd. And if it was bullshit, I appreciate all the pity laughter.” He grins. “Good night, New York! Thank you!”

The crowd gives loud, genuine applause as he bows and steps off, the music playing. He’s grinning, there’s a bounce in his step—he did it, he fucking did it. He nearly threw up a couple of times out of nervousness but he fucking _did_ it.

He also didn’t let anything slip that wasn’t in the official police report, which, good, y’know? Derry’s police department had seen it as an open-and-shut case of two counts of attempted murder on Bower’s part and a case of self-defense on Richie’s part, and they just wanted the paperwork over and done with, so he’d gotten off pretty easily all things considered.

His manager (who has been way more patient than Richie deserves) is nodding backstage, his arms folded the way he gets when he’s nervous, but he’s grinning. “I got it all filmed so we can watch it later, see what they liked, what we need to tighten up.”

That’s what this whole NYC thing is for. His manager thinks he can swing a Netflix special out of this once it’s in its final form, but Richie’s trying not to think about that. For one thing, he’d have to talk way less about Eddie. Doing a live show that Eddie’s never going to see is fine and dandy but having something up on Netflix for posterity that anyone can see at any time… yeah, Eddie might not watch his comedy but there’s no way he wouldn’t hear or see something about it.

“Thanks,” Richie says, already doing some rewrites in his head. He wanted to just work the comedy circuit in the city, going out to clubs and bars, but he had these connections and his manager felt that a comeback show would be better, career-wise, and, well, Richie does keep him around for a reason. “I’m going down to the green room, I have to change.” He’s sweated right through his fucking shirt.

He gets down to the green room, opens the door, and breathes a sigh of relief. He can change, go home, help Eddie with his bandages—which has slowly but surely stopped giving him a heart attack every time—and…

“Y’know you’re not nearly as fucking ugly as you seem to think, you dickwad, and you’d have a six pack too if you actually ate a vegetable and went to the gym.”

Richie freezes.

Eddie is sitting on the green room couch. Which… okay obviously Eddie doesn’t know the whole thing about green room couches and how you never sit on them because everyone’s had sex on them, otherwise he wouldn’t be within ten feet of the thing. But. More importantly. Eddie is _here_. In the green room. Talking about Richie’s comedy.

“…how long have you been here?” Richie asks, which is probably a stupid question but he’s hoping against hope that Eddie got here five minutes ago and just came to say congratulations and take him out for some celebratory ice cream.

“I was in the audience,” Eddie says.

Hey, you know, maybe they didn’t kill Pennywise after all. Maybe he’s still in the Deadlights. Maybe this is a part of that worst timeline that he glimpsed, the timeline where he didn’t shove Eddie out of the way and Eddie died, and Stan died…

“You… what?” Richie croaks. “You never watch my comedy. You don’t think I’m funny.”

“I wanted to surprise you,” Eddie explains. He stands up. He can do that on his own, now. In fact he can do most things on his own now, continued physical therapy notwithstanding. “And I do think you’re funny, asshole, just because I don’t pander to the ninety percent of your humor that’s dumb as shit and just because I never put up with the ‘your mom’ jokes—”

Actually, if Pennywise could come back to life and eat him, that would be great. Richie would love that. One giant spider-clown from space, please.

“You’re here,” he says. Because he’s an idiot.

Eddie stares at him like he honestly cannot believe Richie, like Richie is incredible in the most literal sense of the word. “Yes, I’m here, Richie, I’m here and I’m wondering why you felt like you could tell the entire fucking city of New York that you’re in love with me but not me.”

Richie opens and closes his mouth a few times like a dying fish.

Eddie sighs patiently, walks up, and presses the pads of his fingers underneath Richie’s jaw, closing his mouth. “Did you mean it?” he asks, and his voice has that tremulous tone that it only ever gets sometimes when they’re alone, talking about the deep shit they usually avoid talking about, like Richie’s alcoholism and how his mom was an alcoholic too, and the things Eddie’s therapist has told him about Munchausen by proxy.

Richie swallows. He wants to deny it, wants to be a coward like he always has been, but look at where being a coward got him in life. And to lie to Eddie at this point would just be… it would be cruel, and Richie’s a lot of things, but cruel to his friends is not one of them.

“Of course it’s true,” he manages. His voice comes out strained and wet, the way it felt and sounded in the Deadlights when he watched Eddie die. “Dipshit, I’ve been… I mean I didn’t remember, all that time, but I felt this… hole in me and when I saw you again I thought—oh. Oh, there you are, that’s why. I’ve… I’ve been in love with you this whole time.”

Eddie nods, his face turning down into that frown he gets when he’s thinking, his eyes big and brown and soft. Eddie’s so soft, it’s no wonder he’s always yelling and hissing and scratching like an alley cat. How else could he get anyone to take him seriously when he’s just so fucking cute?

“Y’know, I was sitting in the audience and thinking, I’m gonna surprise him. And then you busted out with that bullshit and I thought, oh I’m gonna surprise him all right, I’m gonna surprise him by strangling him the second he walks through the green room door.” Eddie takes a deep breath and sighs it out, like he’s resigning himself to something. “But then I remembered that you did promise me you’d take me to LA once the divorce is finalized, and you’d make me eat In n Out and let me fix up your… what did you call it, your fucking soulless gluten-free trash apartment?”

Richie snorts. “I said it was dairy-free.”

“Oh, right, my mistake.” Eddie smiles up at him, and that—that’s what he’d cross oceans for. That’s why he stubbed his toe, nearly split his head open flailing around on the monkey bars, nearly choked to death shoving twenty Oreos into his mouth, and all manner of other insane and life-threatening things—to get tense, strung-up, furious Eddie Kaspbrak to smile. And, on a good day, laugh.

“I mean, In n Out is worth not killing a man over,” Richie says solemnly.

Eddie rolls his eyes. “Jackass. I remembered that I’m in love with you, too, is what I was building up to. But now you’ve gone and ruined the moment—”

“No, no, we can do the moment over.” Richie’s mouth is running because it’s either that or let Eddie hear the sound of his heart shooting out of his ribcage. “We can definitely—I can—”

“Nope, too late, there’s only one way to save this.”

“How?”

Eddie kisses him.

Richie… okay he outright flails for a second because he doesn’t know what the fuck to do with his hands or his mouth or any of it. He’s kissed people before, of course, duh, but none of it ever meant anything. Everyone was missing something. He didn’t know at the time that it was the fact that they weren’t Eddie, but now he does. Now he’s kissing Eddie, and Eddie is…

…Eddie’s a very good kisser. Huh. Who knew.

Richie finally figures out what to do with his hands, which is wrap them around Eddie’s waist, and Eddie’s hands fall to Richie’s shoulders. Richie’s sweaty and probably pretty gross, all those hot stage lights doing him no favors, and he’s exhausted and his mouth probably tastes like shit because he’s been on stage talking for an hour and he hasn’t eaten in five hours because he was scared of throwing it all up again, but Eddie doesn’t seem to care. And Richie—well, Richie thinks Eddie is fucking perfect.

“Sorry our shirts aren’t off,” Richie mumbles.

“What?”

“In the restaurant you said we should take our shirts off and kiss…”

“Oh, fuck off, I was drunk—”

“You were drunk and you wanted to make out with me while we were shirtless. Ooh, Eds, how naughty.”

“And yet you had no idea I had feelings for you, you moron, fuck you, with your fucking heart eyes telling me how I’m brave and you believe in me and then you fucking change my bandages for weeks and come to my divorce meetings with me with your stupid fucking Team Eddie shirt like it’s a sports game and not my _fucking divorce_ and you never _once_ said you were in love with me—”

Eddie’s really building up steam into an excellent lecture, here, Eddie’s very good at lectures, but Richie suspects he’s found a way to shut him up, now, so he tries it out and kisses Eddie.

It works, and this kiss is a lot longer. And a lot filthier.

“Let’s go home,” Richie suggests, feeling like he’s just crushed a clown’s heart, feeling like he’s just grabbed a baseball bat and is about to beat this fucker in the head, feeling like he’s just thrown rocks across a stream at Bower’s gang, reckless and glowing and _brave_. “And get ice cream. And we can… I’ll tell you everything.”

“I’m pretty sure you just told everything up on that stage there.”

Richie thinks about the kissing bridge, about the initials he carved there, and shakes his head. “There’s way too much I saved just for you.” Not that he ever thought he’d get to tell Eddie, but… he saved it all. There are some things that are just for the two of them, always have been.

Eddie kisses him one last time, and mumbles “fucker” into his mouth, but Richie’s pretty sure he’s been forgiven.

…although now that means he has to change the whole unrequited love bit of his routine. Shit. Well. There are worse things. And he’s pretty sure (or so he hears) that telling people stories about your dynamite bitch of a spouse that you admire to the moon and back gets a lot more laughs from the audience than moaning to them about how you’re in love with your roommate.

“Do not even think about putting this into your fucking routine,” Eddie hisses, even though he knows that Richie’s definitely gonna do just that.

And Richie—Richie just laughs.


End file.
